Bloody Dawn (6 page)

“The war is ending,” cheered an elated Hovey Lowman.
²⁹
Even the wheat and oat harvest had proven bounteous this summer. But best of all, since Thomas Ewing had taken charge, not one alarm had shattered the peace of Lawrence. Then, while the hurrahs continued and while Lawrence men were still congratulating one another on seeing the war through to the end, something happened.

During the last days of July, young Lieutenant Hadley met with Mayor George Collamore and spoke of an urgent message just received from Kansas City. Word had leaked out from the woods of western Missouri, warning that a desperate push against Lawrence was in the making, set to coincide, as the spies learned, when the moon was at its brightest, an advantage the raiders would use on their march through Kansas. The two men discussed the message, considered the source highly reliable, then debated a course of action. The plan proposed by Mayor Collamore was finally adopted.
³⁰

Thus, at midnight on July 31, when the moon was reaching its crest, the bell at the armory was sounded.
³¹
Startled, half stupid with sleep, militiamen came tumbling from their beds once more, throwing on clothes and hats and rushing for the door. Lamps began to dot the darkened town again as shouting, panting men raced through the streets to their stations. No one actually knew the cause of the excitement, but it spread the more for a want of it, from one to the next until the entire city was caught in the crush. The cannon was wheeled into place and shotted, and soon, with weapons leveled, several hundred militiamen were in their positions. Without knowing particulars, baffled citizens could only guess, but with
the moon full and the land lit like a beacon the logic behind an attack was frightening. But the night slipped to morning and no one came to Lawrence.

The next day reinforcements from the country arrived, nearly one hundred extra men. A squad of soldiers and cannon crossed the river from Fort Leavenworth and joined the defenders. As the hours ticked slowly by, another night of nervous watch came. At dawn, however, when Hadley's scouts returned, their report was the same as the night before—no sign of the enemy. Try as they might, most still had no idea what the basis for the alarm was, and mysteriously, when questioned, Collamore and Hadley remained evasive.
³²
On Sunday more help arrived and a company of soldiers passing down the valley stopped to aid the town. Tensions began to ease somewhat. Loafers and doubters, many of whom had little or no property to lose even if Lawrence were sacked, laughed at the clumsy spectacle of marching militia. While the light from the moon began to wane, suspense also started to fade; as another night passed with no unusual occurrences, townsmen, gaining in boldness, actually spoiled for a fight and loudly hoped the Rebels would indeed appear.

“Lawrence has ready for any emergency over
five hundred
fighting men,” threatened the
Journal
, “every one of whom would like to see [them].”
³³

Finally, after three sleepless nights the alert was called off—the greatest of the war—and like all the rest, it too passed peacefully. Friends relaxed and joked among themselves once more and pointed in fun at their own fears and weaknesses. In retrospect, it all seemed so absurd. The likelihood that a hundred bushwhackers would dare risk the fifty-mile ride through an armed and aroused land only to take on a city the size of Lawrence suddenly struck many as not only remote but ridiculous. “It would be impossible,” laughed one man.
³⁴
And should any Rebel force be foolish enough to try, it could never slip past the blue wall protecting Kansas “without detection” and hence advance warning to the interior. If some people had responded to the alarm in a wild, irresponsible manner, the sum could be waved off as little more than a reflex from the days of uncertainty—the days before Gettysburg and Vicksburg and impending victory, and more especially, the awful, agonizing days before Thomas Ewing and the border guard.

While the Lawrence companies stacked weapons and wheeled the cannon back to its place, the country militia tramped home to thresh wheat, cut hay, and serve as the brunt of mirth and laughter by their neighbors. Hadley and Mayor Collamore, because of their secrecy, were themselves the target of sarcasm. “All the excitement,” some laughed, “was engineered by the upstart of a young lieutenant, who wanted to make a noise in the world.” And Collamore, still silent on the matter, henceforth wore the albatross of “our nervous mayor.” Handsome George Hoyt, romantic in buckskins and his brace of ivory-handled revolvers, rode into town and snorted at the whole idea.
³⁵
Kansas editors joined the sport, poking fun and offering Lawrence sage advice on how to avoid any future “scares.” After all, they insisted, and as Hovey Lowman himself had admitted, “the war is ending.”

“Thus the beginning of the end unmistakably appears,” intoned the Reverend George Paddock from the pulpit of the Methodist Church. “Hope begins to smile again over the land.”
³⁶

And townspeople longed to smile again and enjoy the pleasant side of life, free of worry, doubt, and fear. There were outdoor band concerts to attend, performed at dusk each week beneath the liberty pole. Excitement was growing over the Pacific Railroad and the telegraph that would soon link Lawrence to the world, and there was a lively interest in the coming visit of abolitionist and “Pathfinder” John Charles Frémont. Grand times were ahead, and there simply was no room for a flickering, faraway war.

Just after the full moon scare, the squad of artillerymen and their cannon returned to Fort Leavenworth. A week later, the company of troops continued their march down the valley. Even Lieutenant Hadley and his scouts were ordered elsewhere.
³⁷
And not a soul raised a voice against it for as the last soldier left town that day there was a conscious, desperate effort among the people to begin the long journey back to peace and growth and business as usual. Then too, that night, for the first time in the war, Lawrence didn't bother to send out guards to the edge of town, nor the next night, nor the next.

As the melodies from the concert drifted sweetly over the city on a warm evening in August and folks sat drowsily on their porches sipping lemonade, reading the papers, and swatting gnats and flies, no one paid any mind to the strangers. There were always new faces passing through—immigrants, travelers, peddlers. But these strangers were different. They had been watching everything all along, with a veiled but sharper interest than most—the panic, the watch, the confidence, and finally, the laughter. When they had seen enough they quietly left, and no one noticed their going.

The days of August slipped slowly by and life along the border continued calm and unbroken. At Lawrence “the people never felt more secure” as the moon waxed and waned and the night sky grew darker.
³⁸

Although the column of horsemen was well behaved, more than a few residents of Gardner became suspicious after they had disappeared down the Santa Fe Road
.

First, over a dozen hungry riders had dropped from the line and suddenly turned back to the village hotel. After bolting down a scratch supper the men then went to the stable and selected two fresh horses. In their place, a couple of jaded mounts were left with a promise that the others would be returned the following day. This in itself would have been no cause for concern, for such things commonly happened. What was strange, however, occurred when a few more stopped at a well. As the thirsty men drank they talked with a citizen and revealed that they were members of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry bound for Lexington, Missouri. The troopers had left without further ado, but their words hung perplexingly in the night air. To catch up with the column, the men rode west. Lexington was east!
³⁹

“God might have made a more lovely country, but I am sure He has never done it.”
²

Thus spoke an inspired world traveler as he stood high atop Mount Oread surveying the beautiful scenes around him. Indeed, for those who made the steep climb up this day the panorama more than repaid their efforts. Looking west, the viewer beheld the historic California Road, gracefully winding its way to the horizon through a pleasant plateau of prairie and field. To the north, at the base of the hill, they saw the broad Kansas River suddenly but quietly slide into view as it rolls east, watering a wide, sandy valley of cottonwood and willow. Facing south, the dusty Fort Scott Road was spied descending through checkered farmland until it reaches the belt of timber along the Wakarusa River. There, at three miles, the road crosses the tiny, sheer-banked stream at Blanton's bridge; a few miles further it breaches the forested bluffs and disappears on the high prairie. Eastward, the California Road fades away through green meadows for several miles, then enters the village of Franklin. Another two miles and the road vanishes into the woods and fords the Wakarusa at Blue Jacket's crossing.

And down the eastern face, directly below the windswept summit, the viewer received his fit and final reward as he gazed on the “fairest city in Kansas”—Lawrence, August 20, 1863. From the heights the town lay open like a book. Because most lots had been stripped of trees and brush earlier, only saplings and shrubs betrayed a landscape almost bleak. Yet by frontier standards Lawrence was a well-plotted, trim, even pretty town of three thousand souls; its population in Kansas was second only to Leavenworth—a fact that troubled the residents not a whit. Second in numbers, as the adage went, first in integrity.

“Lawrence the commercial, literary and political center of the State,” boasted one proud citizen. “More building going on here than in any other place west of the Mississippi!”
³
And so it was. New homes were “going up like magic.” Already several hundred of the finest homes in Kansas graced the town. While building was stagnant elsewhere and other communities were failing because of the war, Lawrence had actually flourished. Nowhere was a house left unoccupied. Moreover, demand in lots was so intense that often two or three families shared a single home while awaiting completion of their own. And there seemed no end in sight.

Down the northern face of Mount Oread lay the limits of the city. Here, in West Lawrence, many of the town's prominent and wealthy citizens lived, and here too reposed most of the newer and more “tasteful” residences. To the east the older sections of the city began, and running three blocks from the river, East and West Lawrence were cleanly divided by a narrow but deep-sided ravine almost in the center of town. Several short bridges spanned the chasm and here, lining its banks, the city's only considerable growth of trees stood. Parallel with the ravine and a few blocks east was the business district. Beyond that, in the eastern river bottoms, the shantytown of nearly a thousand blacks had sprung up almost overnight.

From his home high on Mount Oread, George Bell, a former Union officer and current county clerk, could view the entire southern extent of Lawrence as well as the traffic coming up from the Wakarusa. He could also see the roads branching off to the city from the California road, one of which is the main thoroughfare, Massachusetts Street. Here in the south, the long business artery begins and reaches north through the heart of town to end at the banks of the Kaw over a mile away.

Up broad, dusty Massachusetts, seven blocks from the river, the South Park begins.

Nestled in the northwest corner of the park was the home of the Reverend Hugh Fisher, his wife Elizabeth, and their five small children. Although he wasn't exactly a legend in his own time, thirty-nine-year-old Hugh Fisher with his coy, wry smile could nevertheless claim title to a growing reputation, not only in Lawrence but along the border as well.

In 1861, when a brigade of jayhawkers made a sweep through western Missouri, Fisher tagged along as chaplain. The temptations on all sides were great, however, and shortly, like the men in his spiritual charge, the reverend joined the looting frenzy, even to the point of stripping “secesh” churches—just a few months before he had scolded children about “profane swearing … rum drinking and tobacco.” The lord's work was carried a step further when the Kansan began coaxing slaves from Missouri masters. The spectacle of newly freed blacks—some joyous, some sobbing, all eternally grateful—was like scripture from the Book of Exodus; for Fisher it proved an appealing, satisfying side of the war. Later, the preacher became superintendent of contrabands, aiding displaced or runaway slaves by relocating them in Kansas. It was a rewarding but exacting job, and early that spring duties as superintendent even came within a whisker of proving fatal.

When guerrillas under George Todd stopped the steamer near Sibley, Missouri, one dark morning in March, they knew from informants downriver that escaped slaves were on the boat. But more importantly, Todd had high hopes of locking an iron grip around the throat of their escort, Fisher, who reportedly was also on board. When a search from stem to stern failed to flush out the quarry, the Rebels threatened three times to apply the torch if the jayhawker didn't come out. But the intended victim did not appear, and after murdering a number of the contrabands the bushwhackers finally left. Fortunately for the preacher, plans had suddenly been changed, and he chose to travel by rail rather than by the precarious Missouri River.

In mid-August Hugh Fisher returned to his home in Lawrence. Since the beginning of war he had seldom been around much, and even now it was not a visit but an ailment that brought him back. Quinsy, a debilitating throat infection, left the uncommon minister stretched on the sickbed.
⁴

On New Hampshire Street, a block from the park, stood the just-completed brick home of the newlyweds Louis and Mary Carpenter. Judge Carpenter was a kindly, affable young man from New York who despite his age was one of the rising names in Kansas politics. Open and honest, Carpenter had recently served as probate judge to the county and in the past year had just missed in a bid to become the state's attorney general. Many a campaign was in store for this man of talent and drive, however, and the judge's future as a Kansan of the first order was as bright as it was certain.
⁵

A block north of the park, in an open space on the west side of Massachusetts, a score of black recruits were encamped under the charge of the Reverend Samuel Snyder, captain, Second Kansas Colored Regiment.

On the opposite side of the street, a block down, twenty-two white recruits of the Fourteenth Kansas had also pitched their tents in a vacant lot. They were young local boys mostly—“babes,” snickered adults—below the age for actual duty, yet eager and preparing for military life all the same. Although they wore their blue uniforms manfully and tried to play the role, when or if they would soon receive weapons was anyone's guess.
⁶

From there for the next three blocks Massachusetts Street was framed by a series of solid, handsome structures that, said one admirer, “would be an ornament to any Eastern town.” It was, in fact, the finest commercial street in Kansas with many two-and some three-story buildings. Much of the way was covered by shaded sidewalks with stores, shops, and offices occupying the ground floors and family apartments and more offices on the levels just above. Allen's Hardware, Fillmore's Dry Goods, Sargent & Smith's Meat Market, Marcy's Bowling Saloon, DaLee's Photography, Storm's Farm Machinery. Inside Storm's, a mockingbird showered the street with notes from “Old John Brown.”
⁷

A few doors down was Ridenour & Baker's. On the shelves of the two-story building known locally as “R & B's” was one of the most complete grocery selections in Kansas—everything from flour, sugar, and salt to cove oysters and canned figs.

The business began in the fifties when the two men, Peter Ridenour of Ohio and Harlow Baker of Maine, met, talked, became friends, and thereupon decided to form a partnership. It was an open-ended deal, however, for as both agreed, after three years the pact would be null and void and each could go his separate way.

Unlike other frontier merchants who sold dry goods, hardware, and such, as well as groceries under the roof of one general store, Ridenour and Baker chose instead to devote their entire attention to foodstuffs, not a novel idea but in a sparsely populated country certainly a daring one. “You can't make a living selling groceries alone,” laughed a local competitor. “We sell that line at cost to bring trade for our other goods.”

Undismayed, the men set to work, rising early, staying late, loading and unloading, buying, selling, cutting corners here, cutting costs there, dealing plainly yet fairly with their customers, learning each day and gaining while they did. In two years Ridenour and Baker bought out the merchant who laughed, and at the conclusion of three years the partnership had become so lucrative that ending it was out of the question. Soon a clerk was hired to handle retail while the owners began buying and selling wholesale. As the volume of trade increased the store itself was enlarged until it reached right up to the back alley. And as the hard work passed to others, the two owners assumed lighter tasks. By 1863 the once humble pair of grocers had become the strongest, most prosperous tandem in town.

On hand at R & B's was the largest inventory in the store's history. During a recent buying spree in New York, Ridenour had taken advantage of the fall in gold prices to sink every cent into fresh supplies. The times were so good, moreover, that he had also signed several thousand dollars' worth of vouchers.

Peter Ridenour also brought back a new employee. When a wealthy New York associate who wanted his son to learn business from the bottom—as well as distance him from bad sorts in the metropolis—asked his friend to take the boy west, the Kansan agreed, but not until after a good-natured protest. As Ridenour pointed out, the youth was a dandy, didn't know the meaning of labor, and would soon be writing home for ticket money east. But the boy had matured much since his discharge following the Battle of Gettysburg; he was big and athletic, had a pleasant disposition, and, insisted the father, he would work! In the end the New Yorker won out and the plan did go as hoped. By the time two weeks elapsed the son had smoothly made the shift; he found the hard work and clean air invigorating, the quaint, quiet village amusing in many respects yet comforting and somehow very reassuring. And not least, the crop of young females made the days and nights quite interesting. He and a fellow employee nearly the same age now shared an apartment above the store.
⁸

Clark's Furniture, Eastern Bakery, Pollock's Cut-Rate Clothing, the Lawrence Bank, Arthur Spicer's Beer Hall, Danver's Ice Cream Saloon. Down Massachusetts Street, two blocks from the river, sitting on the corner solid, heavy, and proud was the keystone of Lawrence, the Eldridge House. Rebuilt defiantly on the foundation of the ruined Free-State Hotel, the four-story edifice was the most imposing structure in town.